Saturday, February 22, 2014

The Briel Altair 8800 Replica Kit

I recently built a Briel Altair 8800 computer kit. Introduced in 1975, the original Altair 880 was one of the first computers that could be built by a hobbyist. Microsoft's first consumer product was a version of BASIC for the Altair.



Vince Briel has been selling a replica of the Altair 8800 for a few years. As the front panel requires some custom manufacturing, the kits are offered in batches. Late last year pre-orders were taken for the fourth batch of the kits, and I placed my order for a kit (he also sells fully assembled systems). I also ordered the optional RAM disk that emulates two floppy disk drives and allows the system to run the CP/M operating system.



I've made a series of YouTube videos documenting my experiences with the system:


While I tried some original Altair programs like BASIC, and toggled some programs in with the front panel switches, mostly I have been running the CP/M operating system. I used CP/M back in the 1980s on several platforms, including an Apple II with a CP/M card. The old dial-up Bulletin Board (BBS) Systems, predating the Internet, often used CP/M and gave users command line access to it.



I'm having fun running old CP/M programs like the Star Trek and Zork adventure games and WordStar word processor.

2 comments:

  1. These are great fun. You might enjoy my YouTube of one of these beasts playing Star Trek on an authentic period terminal.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxcFNOpnIIs

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  2. Jeff,

    Enjoying your blog posts. I have built and am using several Briel replicas (kim-1 and altair).

    I recently purchased an PiDP from Oscar Vermeulen (felt like I was soldering forever on this one). His PiDP PDP 8 has been very fun. It's require me to think a bit differently than what I'm used to. I highly recommend it, if you decide to get one, I would love to see a post on it.

    http://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-8

    Thanks,
    Jimmy Ipock

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